HSK REPORT

[beijingbooty]

Well, I just sat HSK elementary level two days ago, and thought I would share my experience to give others an idea of what it was like.

I have been learning fairly intensively in my spare time for the last 2.5 years and can hold a decent conversation with chinese people. Being a self learner, you do not get forced to develop your writing and reading skills to the same extent as you woud in a classroom environment. Instead you naturally tend to focus on the easier conversational aspects of mandarin and avoid the tedious character writing exercises and passage reading, so I was at a disadvantage in that respect, which in hindsight may have been my downfall.

HSK elementary was a three component test, first was listening comprehension, second was grammar structure and third was reading comprehension. Everyone has their own set of headphones, an answer sheet and a question sheet. You must use a pencil, so that you can rub out answers you want to modify.

My exam was comprised of about 20 people, (all Korean girls apart from one Korean male and myself - euro male).

I had no problems whatsoever with the listening comp sections and felt that I achieved at least 80-90% correct answers. The reading comp. section was nasty, mainly because of the time limit. I did not complete two questions and had no time whatsoever to check my answers. Therefore I felt quite disheartened with that section and think I would only have achieved approx 40% correct. Another half hour and I would have had time to check and re-read articles and do MUCH better. The time limit killed me.

To summarize, if you are a self learner and want to get HSK, then you MUST work hard on passage reading and speed reading. Listening comp and grammar structure are the EASIER parts. Work yourself hard with new characters and read as much as possible otherwise you will feel a little pissed off come HSK time. There is nothing worse than achieving good results in some sections and then have your overall grade pulled right back by another section.

One further gripe; even thought the exams are marked by merely feeding the answer sheets through an automatic marking machine, it still takes up to three months to get results back from Beijing. I just dont accept that in this age of high speed communication we still have to accept stone age time schedules.